Run time: 138 mins

Francis Ford Coppola’s last dance is an epic, sprawling odyssey of mad artistic ambitions.

Part of Coppola’s reputation as a filmmaker paints him as an adventurer, prepared to risk everything, to defy the studio suits, to go to the brink of ruin and insanity, all for the sake of art. The making of Apocalypse Now cemented that legend. Now, it seems, the 85-year-old is putting all his chips on the table one last time, with his long-awaited sci-fi epic Megalopolis, a film 40 years in the making.

Set in a reimagined modern America, the story centres on Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a visionary artist, dreaming of propelling “The City of New Rome” into a utopian future. In opposition stands Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who clings to a regressive status quo characterised by greed, special interests, and partisan strife. Caught in the middle is Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar challenges her loyalties and compels her to confront her own beliefs about what humanity truly deserves.

Playing like a reckless surreal dream, it’s one of the most chaotic and captivating entries in the director’s six-decade career. A thundering magnum opus, or a beautiful disaster?